Right lads, talk to me. What’s the story with this? I watched the documentary on NEtflix which was great and want to know more. I kind of get how it works in that it’s a ledger shared over millions of computers but how does that work in prctice?

Specifically,
-How do I buy it?
-How do I know it’s safe and 'can’t be hacked? The Mt Gox one was hacked. Another one in Korea was hacked.
-If I want to start accepting in my business, what do I do?
-If it’s transferred, there’s no possible comeback because it’s anonymous, right? So if I buy something I’ve got no legal rights?
-I’m pretty sure Ireland has no laws for this area at present.@Horsebox@briantinnion@balbec@Rocko@Julio_Geordio@mac@TreatyStones@anyone else who fancies it

Can set up your own wallet on blockchain.info if want to store bitcoin yourself

Is coinbase an exchange of some sort? Do I basically lodge a load of money with them? And are fellas just buying it to invest(so are they sitting on it and not really using it) waiting for it’s value to go up? How about trading services in it?

Right lads, talk to me. What’s the story with this? I watched the documentary on NEtflix which was great and want to know more. I kind of get how it works in that it’s a ledger shared over millions of computers but how does that work in prctice?

There’s already another thread running on this.

There have been a number of hacks recently, the majority though don’t actually hack the currency themselves and mostly just trick systems & users to divert money to a different destination than was intended.

The most recent one, a company was planning an ICO (initial coin offering). They had their mailing list, crm systems and website hacked. The hackers sent an email to all their clients offering a “pre-release” batch of coins but had the purchases diverted to their own wallet. They got away with 500k.

My take on it is blockchain will revolutionise the payments industry and if you could invest in that then I’d be all for it. The crypto-currencies themselves I’m not so sure. Seems to be a new one every week and they can’t all last. Some people will make huge amounts of money on them and some people will lose their bollox.
We are at the start/middle of a cryptocurrency bubble. The amount of people who ask me about them or tell me they’ve invested in them (and when I ask them why) haven’t a clue other than they heard you can make good money in them is unbelievable. See tech stocks in a previous generation.
When you start buying something in the belief that it’s value will rise for no intrinsic reason, other than the value has risen previously, you know you are in trouble. See previous in; Tulips, South Sea Shares, Railway shares, Internet shares, Irish property etc. etc. etc.
Similar to internet stocks, people could see the internet was obviously going to be a game changer but you couldn’t invest in “The Internet” so you had to buy stocks. Similarly blockchain will be a game changer but you can’t invest in blockchain as such. Maybe a handful of crypto-currencies will survive and thrive, but we’ll see.

Anyway all that said if you want to have a punt with a bit of money you can afford to lose go mad, be good craic anyway. Just remember to get out at the top

Similar to internet stocks, people could see the internet was obviously going to be a game changer but you couldn’t invest in “The Internet” so you had to buy stocks. Similarly blockchain will be a game changer but you can’t invest in blockchain as such. Maybe a handful of crypto-currencies will survive and thrive, but we’ll see.

Anyway all that said if you want to have a punt with a bit of money you can afford to lose go mad, be good craic anyway. Just remember to get out at the top

I read something recently but can’t really remember the details. But the gist was that as the number of coins in any particularly cryptocurrency increase the cost associated with mining new coins also grows and that eventually the costs of mining the new coins outweighs the value of the coin. So once a currency peaks, people quickly move onto a new currency (e.g. the move from Bitcoin to Ethereum). I could have that arseways.

Apparently bitcoin mining is marginal at best now with the costs of electricity etc. you need a huge scale of operation to remain in the business. Like anything really if there’s money to be made people will do it, if there isn’t they won’t.